4 Takeaways from a Good Podcast on Content Marketing

Survey research suggests almost everyone is doing content marketing these days, but I’m not convinced that’s completely true. It’s my observation that many marketers have latched on to the term because it’s trendy without really understanding what it means.

I think having some clarity is important so that we’re all working from the same lexicon, which also means we set expectations about what an effective program can do, and what it cannot.

I’ve embedded the recording nearby if you’d like to listen to it on the go. In addition, in this post, I’ve summarized a few key points that we just touched on in the discussion alongside some related links for further study.

1) What is content marketing versus marketing content?

People tend to understand things in the context of what they already know and we all know marketing content. Marketing content is what marketing has done forever – marketing generates a report, puts it behind a registration page and then blasts it out all over the web with a CTA to download it.

The hope is that someone gives up their email in exchange. Marketing sometimes calls these marketing qualified leads (MQL) and hands them off to a sales development representative (SDR) to nurture into a sales qualified leads (SQL).

This is a basic approach to marketing and it can work for some businesses. It’s not inherently a good idea, or a bad, however, it is not content marketing.

Content marketing means publishing useful and relevant content at the same time, in the same place, on a platform you own, and doing it consistently over time in order to build an audience of engaged readers (or viewers or listeners) that trust your advice.

2) What are the key components of content marketing?

An audience that trusts you or your business is incredibly valuable and it should be protected. Still, sometimes business leaders have trouble making the connection – how does this translate into business?

It translates over the course of four steps:

a) get the audience to visit;
b) provide a reason to come back (subscribe – many businesses overlook this step);
c) give them a chance to raise their hand and become customers; and
d) iterate and improve over time.

This process is not easy and it is not quick – trust is earned not given. On the other hand, it is cumulative and compounds like interest in a bank account. Once you build a platform, more opportunities develop.

3) How do you measure content marketing?

One company I once worked for learned that people that engaged our content were 50% more likely to make a purchase. Another company I worked for was able to prove that a blog it produced influenced about one-third of enterprise software deals with an average selling price (ASP) in excess of one million dollars.

Those are very compelling measures, but they didn’t happen overnight and took a while to get there. As such, I recommend content marketers – and PR pros – measure directional metrics along four key categories:

About Sword and the Script Media, LLC

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Sword and the Script Media, LLC is veteran-owned public relations agency immersed in the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace. We focus on building consistent, sustainable, repeatable, and process-driven programs for PR, content marketing and social media. A defining difference comes down to our approach – that marketing ought to have utility. This is because marketing that helps, sells better than marketing that hypes.